Fregosi Left Out of Pitching Coach Decision

The potential impact of Dave Stewart on a pitching staff can be measured by his success with the San Diego Padres in 1998, when they won the National League pennant.

Now Stewart, assistant general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, has put his goal of scaling baseball’s bigoted mountain to become only the third African American GM on hold while he replaces Rick Langford as the Blue Jays’ pitching coach for the rest of the season.

It is a move aimed at improving the performance of Toronto’s three disappointing young pitchers--Chris Carpenter, Kelvim Escobar and Roy Halladay--but it carries dangerous overtones, because the strong-willed Stewart and the strong-willed manager, Jim Fregosi, have butted heads on philosophical issues. Fregosi wasn’t involved in the discussions leading to the coaching change and wouldn’t have supported it.

“They asked me what I thought,” he said, referring to Stewart and General Manager Gord Ash, “but the decision had already been made. I don’t think it was the right decision, and I think it makes for a difficult transition.”

The Blue Jays are in the playoff hunt but have received little help from the touted Carpenter, Escobar and Halladay. The feeling was that Langford, who had also been their pitching coach at different levels in the minors, might have become a broken record.

Fregosi, who had never had a coach relieved--Langford was reassigned to triple A--in 15 years as a major league manager, said, “We have some young pitchers, but did Rick Langford do a bad job with David Wells? The one guy [Langford] is a soft-sell guy. The other [Stewart] is very outspoken. Hopefully, he’ll bring something that will help us win. The whole object is to win.”

Fregosi chooses his words carefully. He has yet to remove Langford’s picture from his office wall, where it hangs with pictures of the other coaches. Ash knows there’s potential for conflict between Stewart and Fregosi but said, “Sometimes out of disagreements or differences of opinions, better decisions are made.”

Basically, Stewart volunteered after a series of discussions with Ash, because, Stewart said, “There were no other possibilities that fit.”

Of course, if Stewart hadn’t volunteered, Ash said, “I’d have had to employ my best used-car salesman approach.”

Stewart brings an intensity that characterized his success on the mound. His philosophy: Establish the fastball, pitch inside, recognize and accept your responsibility to carry the club. Don’t put it on the offense and defense.

He still wants to be a general manager but said, “What’s the worst thing that can happen? I’ll be a pitching coach the rest of my life? I know I’m going to be a general manager. If it takes me five years now because I stepped on the field for two months, then so be it. But right now, I think I’m doing something good for the organization. I think people should look at that as unselfish. I don’t look at it as a step back anymore. I look at it as a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to win a World Series.”

Fregosi, whose contract is up at the end of the season, may be wondering why he’s on the outside looking in.

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Baseball has forged an agreement with Israel-based Coast 2 Coast Communications for marketing and public relations representation in Israel, Jordan and the area governed by the Palestinian Authority, expanding the industry’s global potential. Coast 2 Coast is headed by former Dodger executive Chuck Harris, who went to Israel as a tourist and became a resident, thinking bigger than just blue.